Final Fantasy XIII-2’s first week sales figures reveal it has been outsold by Tales of Xillia, a fact which is being greeted as a massive humiliation and confirmation that Final Fantasy brand now lies in ruins.

I for one still love the old Squaresoft Final Fantasy games.
It's just that under Square Enix the whole brand suffered from a rapid quality drop. Most of SE's recent games have been just plain bad and uninspiring.

I don't think you can blame the unpopularity of the game on chauvinism. Remember a lot of jrpgs have female protagonist and lightning fits into the tsundere categorization of moe fetishes. A lot more "tsun" than "dere" but still.

Plus, jrpgs released in the West remain popular in spite of when androgynous, angst-driven young boys are the protagonists. Americans in particular are at least if not more homophobic than the Japanese are chauvinistic.

I don't care much what other people say. FF13 is quite good as a game in my opinion. It has plenty of depth in many areas. Sure, the corridors can be a bit dull and simple in their design, but the sceneries, visuals and gameplay mechanics defenitly are above par in my book.

I've played most of the later FF games (FF9, 7, 8, X and X-2 in that order), but I try not to compare this with those, because, frankly, it's a new game with new ideas, and if I wanna play FF7, then I simply start that game instead.

I didn't think most of the characters were one-dimensional. On the contrary, I think they all had a lot going for them. The problem was the poor presentation of their situations.

Fang and Vanile had to make some painful decisions and were faced with never seeing their home as they knew it again, but this was largely brushed over when it could have been a huge, painful, interesting part of the plot.

Sahz's story was done pretty well with what happened to his son and how he dealt with it. I think it would have been more powerful if we saw more of his past though.

Hope had a lot of character development. He was mentally and physically weak in the beginning, but he evolved from that to attempting murder, then growing up a little more and realizing that wasn't the answer.

Snow was well-written and fun, but he needed more conflict. He had great intentions but those intentions were never challenged enough.

And Lightning was a great character. She was already a soldier and pretty goal driven. She seemed to lack development because we're used to characters who don't start out half as skilled. But as a leader she was better than the majority of FF protagonists in the leadership role. She made great decisions and saw clearly as a soldier, not some over-emotional prick like so often in the past.

I think Nomura is great with characters and story lines, because he's proven himself in the past, but I think the linearity of the game killed a lot of what was set up for the characters.

Lightning was awesome. I liked her character and have no problem with her. She was hot too. But most importantly she was capable and intelligent and not some damsel and she didn't whine all the fucking time like most of the more popular FF protagonists.

Japanese people probably didn't like her because Japanese men are weak and so the weaker the woman the better for them.

that's actually true; the reason why FFXIII and FFXIII-2 are doing so poorly isn't because of the lack of story or whatnot, it's because of the fact that Japanese men hate the fact that there's a female character who is better at a "man's" job then other heroes in the past, and therefore shames the boys playing the games; she makes them look weak and cowardly. Just look at how patriarchal Japanese culture is; women are finally realizing that the men they want to marry all plan to treat them like shit! just look at the reports here on sankaku recently: one of the top things Japanese men worried about was whether their prospective wife was "good at chores" or not; heck, it's the reason that their birthrate is so low: women don't want to marry men who refuse to be there for them. And I'm writing this as a guy who watches tons of anime and plays most every JRPG out there!

^ agreed, although i liked the old games better, square didn't live off in remakes, it made new and refreshing ideas. Quality and dept was it's selling point. Remakes have a chance to flop and disappointing old players, it's nothing but a fan service, and honestly i think hiding behind remakes makes it looks like they're scarred of taking risks. They're being too safe.

They also don't justify the sequels of their other games, all they see is FF, they have other good franchise they have yet to develop and improve. They're rushing things too much. I think square before had passion, now i think money is all they could ever think off.

Along the idealogies of a certain Malstrom,
sales figures are an indicator of quality:
Aside from the 'hardcore' fans that are already in the fanbase, products are 'good' if more people are willing to shell out their cash for it.

In FF's case, 13 had some selling points (lol, hype and disbelief), but had terrible reception - now, its quality is felt in the aftershock (in this case, XII-2's sales lol)

If those games are so good, then I dont see the point of a remake. Think about it. If there happens to be a remake, and it was absolutely well done, You all would just go play the remake and forget all about the original. Let the games be, we consider them a masterpiece, just leave it untouched.

They should really just re-release all the old FF games to the PS Store and then they might have a good dollar. For now, just leave SE be, they arent stupid, they are just trying something new.

Square has been doing real sequels for games for a bit and its always been oh god no more of this. Tactics advance? Fuck that. Dirge of Cerebus? Fuck that. X-2? Fuck that with a rusted chain saw. Remakes they haven't quite had so much difficulty with. The FF4 5 6 advance show that imo.

No way man, if they remake FFVII now it would be worse then FFXIII. Squere can't produce quality games. The only department they are good at is graphics and cutscenes but that doesn't make a whole game.

I have recently revisited VII and can believe this time line. The detail they placed in this game is stunning. Each house is furnished to the finest detail. Cigarettes with ash in the tray, bottle caps next to the bottles, etc.

If they ever decided to remake it all they need to do is up the resolution. Keep everything the same. but also allow a First Person view of the surroundings as this would add the extra Pull.

Characters would need to stay in Anime form. This is the most most most important element. Changing character design to anything else would destroy this title. This is my biggest worry if they ever redid it, as the PS3 demo Aries looked to Human.

Guys, just stop. You guys are idiots. Let FF7 be, quit getting nostalgic, and play some other games. FF13-2 looks like an awesome game, if you dont like the newer FF games just because they arent like your oh-so precious nostalgic treasure FF games, you suck and you dont deserve to be even called a gamer. If they make another JRPG with the same outdated stuff like in their older FF, it WILL NOT go well. So SHUT THE FRICKIN HELL UP!

A few things, one, the new FF games are absolute shit, if you like them, good for you, I imagine a few people must. Two I am NOT a nostalgic ridden FF fanboy, I have never been a big fan of them so this is a non-biased response, the new ones are even WORSE than the old ones were, at least they were bearable. Three, no one is going to take you serious online if you use the word "frickin" it makes you sound like an adolescent girl afraid of using naughty language, either learn a plethora of new vocabulary, or be the like the rest of the population on the internet and use vulgarity, not half assed cursing like "fricken".

1. Theres nothing wrong with the newer ones, you guys just want every FF game to be like FF7. FF10 was really good, and so was FF12. FF13 was a little misstep, not because of the combat, just the sheer linearity of everything. Why would you call of this absolute shit?
2. Umm, why exactly?
3. Bad habit. Its just that there are sites around the internet that kick you out if you try posting curse words. Apparently it isnt like that here.

FFX was awesome. People were way too hard on it. The story was great, the characters were fun, and I appreciated the concept and themes behind the worlds in that game. And it fucking had Auron.

But it was a bit linear, and the complaints about that were already rolling in. So the fact that they made FFXIII as linear as it was was ridiculous, because they had negative feedback on that exact issue years ago with FFX.

"I just hope now that everyone's got their chance at being all fair-weather fan about FF XIII-2 they actually play the fucker and shut up. Thankfully it's on its way here next month anyway and I get to think for myself.

I just think people were waiting for peoples' reaction to this game before purchasing considering so many felt disappointed by XIII. I personally don't understand what was so wrong with it. The characters were decently written at worst, especially true now that I'm seeing what passes for 'writing' in Star Ocean 4. And people had the gall to say Infinite Undiscovery was worse than SO4 and I'd like those people to wear special tags so I can beat them unmercifully upon recognition.

Either way, I wish the game I worked on had had such 'abysmal' sales in its first week. Most games never even reach 500K. Resonance of Fate needs a sequel like nobody's business, and its lifetime sales are around the 500K mark across the planet, and not even at full price for all of those sales.

I just hope now that everyone's got their chance at being all fair-weather fan about FF XIII-2 they actually play the fucker and shut up. Thankfully it's on its way here next month anyway and I get to think for myself.

I don't want a remake of FFX. I know, I'm in the minority that hates X, but I truly thought it was a terrible game, with a terrible plot, that was incredibly easy except for 2 story boss fights. The only fun I had in the game was at the very end when the Monster Arena was unlocked.

I don't know why people think FF is done for. FF coming in second to a game doesn't mean it flopped. Sure it usually does better than everyone, but that hardly means anything.

That's like saying Harry Potter flopped because it came in second to Lord of the Rings. The reality is that both made tons of money. It'll be the same with this FF game, especially when the sales go international.

Everyone should stop talking about this completely since all they can say is everything is done. NOTHING is done, there is obviously a market and there will be for a long time. A few years ago people also said anime is done but it is now very far from it. I hope and believe that producers will ignore the loud mouthed idiots of the internet.

Final Fantasy will be fine. As much as people bitch about FFXIII it did really well. And as much as people are bitching now FFXIII-2 will do really well. And then even if those people bitch after it does well, FFvsXIII will do extremely well.

And then they'll still bitch because "It wasn't exactly like this other FF that I really liked in the past but at the same time I want them to keep trying new things!"

Long story short, stop being sheep and fucking play the game before bitching instead of letting 2ch do your thinking for you.

I didn't expect massive sales records to be broken with this one but ya, it's probably coming off the momentum from its prequel.
IMO, Square has messed up the whole open-ness of the FF games. Though it didn't have much of a story, I believed FFXII nailed the gameplay and open word aspect dead on. Trying to innovate, they kinda fell failed and failed pretty bad.
But still, i'd like to read reviews first. Sales is one thing, the game could still be good.